IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

 

It was the worst of times, it was the pervasiveness of the cruelty, it was the constellation of suffocating lies, it was the unremitting procession of hatreds, it was the field of broken dreams, it was the morning of mourning, it was the evening of death, it was the spring, summer, fall and winter of our discontent, it was the relentless seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years of blinding darkness.

It was a ride down an escalator into Hell, to a place filled with rapists and murderers swarming across the border, with caravans of the worst humanity could offer, with children locked in cages, a place where our shores were closed to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free (a concept that would take on further meaning in a different context), a place where prisoners of war were losers and those who went to war were suckers, a place where women were there for the taking, where disabilities were  mocked, a place where the rule of law and the Constitution were treated with disdain, a place where federal agencies were held in contempt and experts were treated as charlatans, a place where fealty replaced ethics and wrongs flowed like water from a tap, a place where tax returns were treated as national secrets and Congressional subpoenas were ignored without thought or concern, a place where truth was forced into hibernation and our promises were without meaning, a place where floods filled our streets and fires filled our lands and lungs, a place where I can't breathe echoed in every corner of the nation, a place where Proud Boys flourished and evil was deemed indistinguishable from good, a place where autocrats, despots and dictators located refuge and allies were left abandoned, a place where a virus found a home and remained unrestrained, where wearing a mask somehow became a declaration of fundamental disrespect for our freedoms, a place where illness and death became numbers on a page, a place where casting a ballot was no longer a right but a question mark, a place where the Supreme Court became a reflection of one party's dishonesty, a place where morality, decency, compassion, kindness, reason, logic, science, justice became four letter words in the highest office in the land.

And now we pray the light will be once more, and that the seasons will embrace us, and the morning and evening will bring hope, and  love will stand at the ready, and  truth will emerge, and the qualities that once made us strong will escape from their prison.

We pray we will soon see the best of times.

Well, that may be a bit of hyperbole.

We truly only desperately pray that they will no longer be the worst.